Irish house prices rising fastest in EU

Ireland’s house prices were 16.3% higher in the last quarter of 2014 than in the last quarter of 2013, according to Eurostat estimates released today. This is the highest annual house price increase in the EU.

Today’s estimates also show that the rate at which Irish house prices increased over the year in 2014 was by far the fastest in the EU. However, the rate of increase slowed down as the year passed – from being up by 6.8% in Q2, then up by 6.2% in Q3, followed by a lower rate of increase of 3.8% for Q4.

The year-on-year increase in Ireland is the largest among the EU Member States (for which data are available) for this period, and is followed by Malta (+11.0%), Sweden (+10.4%), Estonia (+10.1%) and the United Kingdom (+10.0%). The average house price increase in the EU for the same period was 2.6% in the EU, and 1.1% in the euro area. The largest falls in the same period were seen in Slovenia (-4.4%), Cyprus (-3.3%), Latvia (-3.2%) and Italy (-2.9%).

The highest quarterly increases were recorded in Malta (+4.6%), Ireland (+3.8%), Slovakia (+2.1%) and Luxembourg (+2.0%), and the largest falls in Latvia (-10.2%), Lithuania (-4.3%) and Cyprus (-3.0%).